Darkeresteemers
by Shiva-J
Summary: What if instead of meeting Jane in the Self-Esteem course, Daria met a teenage Brian Taylor instead?
1. Darkeresteemers

**Darkeresteemers**

"Don't bother asking that moron questions," a boys voice emerged from behind her, "He's just reading from a memorized script."

Daria turned to face who was speaking to her, he was about her age with white-blond hair in a stylish look, he wore a black sweater, jeans, blue and white running shoes, and a smile that didn't quite reach his ice-blue eyes.

"Then how the hell are we supposed to get anything out of this?" she asked her unknown fellow prisoner of the Esteem Course.

"We're not," he explained, "This is a punishment for not conforming, I've done it six times already."

Daria raised an eyebrow at that, "Why are you stuck in the course then?"

The lad's smile _did_ reach his eyes as he replied, "Because... I _frighten_ people."

His dark laugh after saying that didn't bring the response he expected from the girl in the green coat and glasses, instead of looking frightened she seemed _intrigued_.

"I wonder," Brian Taylor thought to himself, "Is she... Like me?"

His eyes bored into hers as they began to talk and he began to suspect that the answer to that question was... yes.

"Good," Brian thought, "It'll be nice to have a new apprentice since Jane was arrested... and with Brittany gone I won't need to throw this one away."

He found her more and more interesting by the second, her cold deadpan face a mask that hid untapped depths of rage, rage against a world that didn't understand her.

Or him for that matter.

"Daria," Brian said during their talk, ignoring O'Neill, "Mind if I escort you home? There are all kinds of things we can discuss in a more private setting."

He wondered if she could read his inflections and tones to understand what he meant, and it wasn't sexual.

The half-smile she gave him was answer enough.

"She understands then," Brian thought with dark joy, "Good... I was starting to get lonely... And the animals have gotten boring to play with... I think she and I can find more _interesting_ things to play with."

Mr. O'Neill by chance happened to glance over at Daria and Brian and the twin twisted smiles on their faces struck terror into his pathetic heart and caused him to release his bowels.

The Self-Esteem Class ended on that smelly note.


	2. Darkeresteemers II

**Darkeresteemers II**

In the growing twilight, Daria felt right at home in the still unfamiliar streets of Lawndale with her new companion at the wheel of his Ferrari.

"I've passed their little exit test several times," Brian explained calmly as he drove, "But Li and my Dad won't let me leave, they are not able to rationalize the why of it, but they know by instinct that I am not like them. So they decided that I needed to be 'fixed', ergo the Esteem course."

"I assume it's not working." Daria stated flatly, with hints of amusement in her eyes.

"You assume correctly." Brian replied with a slight twist of his lips.

He pulled up at what he was told was Daria's house, she informed him that her mother's car was present and that it was unusual for her to be home early.

Daria began to ask him to wait outside, but instead Brian said, "I should come with, you might need backup."

She might have protested, but the insistence in his tone didn't leave much room for argument, so she acquiesced.

Once they slipped in, they found her mother lying in wait, and managed to surprise her instead.

"Oh sweetie!" Helen Morgendorffer said after getting over the shock, "It's so nice to see you with a friend."

Brian then introduced him, keeping his manners and when asked why Daria had brought him home explained, "I didn't feel right letting her walk home by herself, so I brought her here myself, I hope you don't mind the intrusion."

"Not at all," Helen replied even while taking an inventory of his appearance and wondered if his interest in Daria was simply friendly or something more.

She then began to explain why she had come home early, but was interrupted by Quinn coming down the stairs, who got one look at who was with Daria and gasped with shock.

Taking advantage of the distraction, Daria led Brian up the stairs and around Quinn, who backed away from the boy in fear and nearly pissed herself when he gave her a dark smile that no one else saw.

Once they were out of sight, Helen began muttering to herself about getting them some snacks in a few minutes, but was interrupted again by Quinn who stammered to her, "Mo-om! You can't let that Brian kid be here!"

"Why?" her mother asked in genuine confusion as she walked to the kitchen to find some chips and a bowl.

"Because the popular girls told me about all the guys at school," Quinn explained as Helen began to tune her out, "And yes Brian is handsome and rich and has a bunch of cool cars, but I've been told that he's _done things_."

Helen went "Uhuh..." a sign that she was pretending to pay attention as she poured some dorrito's into a nice new china bowl.

Quinn kept up the verbal diarrhea of the dark rumors that swirled about Brian Taylor until her mother left the kitchen, having heard none of it.

Once she was gone, Quinn sighed and sat at the table a bit depressed and lost in dark thoughts.

Until the phone rang and forgot all about it when she talked to that Sandi girl and was asked if she wanted to go to Cashmans that night.


	3. Darkeresteemers III

**Darkeresteemers III**

While Sick, Sad World cut to commercial, Brian glanced about Daria's little cell and muttered once more, "I always wondered if I'd wind up in a padded cell... Just didn't think it would be under good circumstances."

Daria smirked at that, especially since she now had a response, "You should see the poem carved into my closet door."

Brian got up from Daria's bed and opened the padded door and did just that, his snickering filled the room, "Wow... Josie Ross was even more screwed up than I thought."

Daria concluded quickly that was the name of the woman who had called this room home, though how Brian knew her was a mystery to be solved another day.

She then offered what remained of the chips that her mother had brought up not all that long ago and he took a couple to be polite.

Once he ate them, Daria asked him, "Had any ideas on how to get out of that stupid class?"

"Several," Brian replied casually while sitting back down, "But until recently maintaining equilibrium was important enough to warrant putting up with the course... Until you arrived."

If Daria was pleased by the praise she didn't show it.

"In that case," she said flatly, "Let's scheme our way out together... Though we will need to make sure that no one can question that we are 'better', at least from an official perspective."

Brian's smile at that would have brought terror to lesser men, "We will need to get O'Neill, and perhaps Manson to support us in this endeavor."

Daria's smile in reply had more teeth in it than Brian had ever seen in a human grin, but oddly enough he found it... _arousing_.

"You are correct Mister Taylor," she replied with evil intent, "But I'm sure the two of us can come up with a means to convince them of the wisdom of this."

Brian then glanced at Daria's bookshelf, with endless rows of books on a wide range of topics, but the truly unpleasant ones were written in foreign languages that up until recently only Daria among those she knew could read.

Then she met Brian who could read them too.

"I have their addresses," Brian said with false innocence, "We'll work on O'Neill first, then Manson."

When Sick, Sad World came back one, Helen reentered Daria's room with some sodas and mistook the vibe of the room completely and was just glad that her strange eldest daughter was happy with her new friend.

She just didn't intend for any funny business to happen under _her_ roof that would result in early grandchildren.

Once she left, Brian said with amusement, "She isn't hard to fool, what about your father?"

"Even more oblivious." Daria commented flatly, her eyes noticed shadows under her door and suspected that either Helen or Quinn was trying to listen in.

Brian followed her gaze and said more quietly, "Quinn could be a problem."

Daria smiled that terrible smile again, "I'm sure you can help me deal with it."

The sounds of Artie talking about the aliens who stole his skin on Sick, Sad World covered up their laughs, laughs that if heard by mortal men would have driven them into madness.

As it was, Quinn Morgendorffer shivered in terror in her room while packing even more clothing in her closet and didn't know why.


	4. Darkeresteemers IV

**Darkesteemers IV**

"I think he got the message." Daria said with dark glee to her companion over the limp and silently weeping figure of their English teacher, Mr. O'Neill.

Who was currently naked and tied up on top of a plastic tarp in his apartment with duct tape on his mouth, he was bleeding from countless wounds, covered in burns, cuts, scrapes, marks from a cattle prod, and had been left to soak in his own filth since he had soiled himself twice.

"Let's make sure," Brian replied with the biggest, most evil smile that Daria had ever seen on someone that wasn't herself.

He then took the cattle prod out and gave it a practice swing in O'Neill's line of sight and relished his whimper of, "Please no..."

Brian punctuated his each of his flatly spoken words with a punch of the prod "You." ZAP! "Will." ZAP! "Pass." ZAP! "Us." ZAP! "Out." ZAP! "Of." ZAP! "The." ZAP! "Esteem." ZAP! "Course." ZAP!

By the end O'Neill was mewling like a kitten and Daria was experiencing a strange feeling of rapture at the sight.

"I can do anything I want to him," she thought to herself, "Is this what being a God feels like?"

Brian gazed at his handy work once more with a sense of pride, he had completely broken this man.

"Isn't he beautiful now?" Brian asked Daria in a hush of wonder and awe and she whispered back a yes.

Broken things were the best kind of things as far as Brian was concerned.

"And Daria agrees." he thought to himself, "Pity we need O'Neill and Manson alive, but I'll watch her take a life soon enough."

It would be the thing that would truly bond them together forever, the taking of human life in front of each other.

"It's what bonded Jane to me," Brian reminded himself as Daria fed their instructions into O'Neill once more while slashing at him with the knife, "But unlike Jane, Daria will have the honor of watching _me_ make a kill."

Jane had been honed and molded to be used and thrown away, Daria however was the keeper.

He was sure of it.

* * *

In the haze of happy thoughts, free from her worries, Quinn Morgendorffer came back home from her shopping trip and found herself making a trip face first into the ground.

"Ouch!" she cried and quickly got up and rushed to a mirror, her bags forgotten since she needed to ensure that nothing had marred her beauty.

Once she had established that there was no facial damage, she returned to the scene of the crime and found the culprit.

"Darriahhhh!" Quinn yelled up the stairs, "You left your boots on the steps!"

Daria came out of her room, looking unusually exhilarated and said sarcastically, "Oh, so sorry..."

Quinn picked up the boots fully intending to throw them at her older sister until she caught a feral gleam from behind Daria's glasses and thought better of it.

So she made a "Harrumph!" and handed them over but saw a flash of red on the soles and said, "Oh god Daria! Did you step into some paint or something?"

"Something." Daria said with dark intent and gave her sister the same twisted smile that she had seen on Brian's face during his moments of pure happiness while working over O'Neill and Manson, breaking their wills and bodies to serve their ends.

Quinn got that smile full force and screamed in unholy terror and released her bladder and bowels and passed out in a dead faint.

Daria's smiled didn't fade a bit as she stared at her younger sister for a long time before heading back upstairs.


	5. Darkeresteemers V

**Darkersteemers V**

Under Brian's advisement, she had traded in her old armor for cream colored sweaters, comfortable loose jeans, and tennis shoes.

"My father hates spending money on me but he'll do it to make himself look rich and important. I could very easily dress very posh all the time but I chose not to." Brian had explained to her on why he dressed the way he did, "The less threatening you look the more you'll blend into the background."

This combined with passing the Esteem course had earned her a lot of praise from her parents.

"Sweetie I'm so happy that you're finally opening up." Helen said to her at the dinner table.

"Thanks Mom," Daria replied with a small smile, "Meeting Brian was one of the best things that has ever happened to me."

She turned her gaze to Quinn as she said that, her smile never vanishing, "Oh and Quinn he's said that for some reason a lot of people seem to think that you're an only child... What's up with that?"

Quinn gasped in shock and as Helen asked what was going on was forced to go into spin mode.

An even more oblivious Jake tried to make Daria feel better by saying, "It's probably just the wrong impression since you girls have different colored hair."

That amused Daria to no end but she hid it behind kind words even while Helen began to interrogate Quinn.

"Oh I'm sure that they'll let her get away with it," Daria though to herself, "But we'll deal with her soon enough..."

* * *

Brian made sure that the door to his room was locked before going into his closet and digging out the small box hidden in the back, he unlocked it with a key he kept in his dresser drawer and opened it.

His smile was terrible and twisted as he began to look at his most valued keepsakes, pictures of the people he had killed.

Oh to be sure they weren't the pictures of their dead bodies, just regular pictures of them when they were alive, his memory preserved every facet of their deaths for him.

"There's Tammy from Oakwood," Brian whispered as he thought of his first murder, "I always think of her when I smell pork... and whenever I see house fires."

No one even suspected that her death wasn't the result of an accidental electrical fire.

Each image told him a story, but he pulled out the two that he was most proud of, one was of his twin sister Brittany and the other was someone who was still alive but had been destroyed in a different way.

"I will always be grateful to you Jane," Brian whispered to the sullen face as he set her picture on the floor and put Brittany's next to it, "If it wasn't for you then that annoying twit would still be alive."

He sighed in pleasure as the past flashed before his eyes, Brittany's horrified moans, Jane's evil grin, the flash of silver metal, the bloody knife rising and falling over and over, the thud of struggle as the prisoner fought for her life, and the triumph as those struggles faded to nothing.

"And I helped her hide the evidence... Or so she thought." Brian said to himself with a laugh.

In truth he had set things up so that Jane would take the fall, even her testimony about his role in the murder had been rejected due to a complete and utter lack of evidence.

Brian put the photos back in the box while thinking, "Granted most people didn't trust me after that, and Dad went off the deep end, but Ashley Amber was easy to fool and with her help I was able to get him on meds. He still hates me but his company sold well, the money is in good investments, and I was able to get my college fund out of his hands so he couldn't use it as an emergency ATM anymore."

He then looked up at the new picture on his nightstand and his smile went from twisted to nice, "And now I have Daria... And we're going to have so much fun..."

He glanced at the box before locking it, reminding himself to get a good picture of Quinn and whoever she was going on a date with once everything was in place.

"I wonder if she'll be number eight or number nine..." Brian mused to himself as he put the box back where it belonged.

Until it was time to add two new pictures to his collection.


	6. Darkeresteemers VI

**Darkeresteemers VI**

"Brian..." Daria whispered softly in awe at what he had just shown her, "I don't know what to say."

Brian Taylor gave his smartly dressed friend a winning smile and whispered back, "You don't have to say anything Daria... This is my gift to you, to us."

That earned him one of her Mona Lisa grins that he had learned to cherish.

The house they were in was decrepit and abandoned, but Brian knew it well since he had spent a lot of time here when Jane was free and his companion,.

A role to which she had been replaced by someone much more worthy.

In the Lane's old living room, hogtied and knocked out by tranquilizers was a man that Daria didn't recognize and her sister, Quinn.

Brian knew who the guy was, even after his decent into heroin addiction, he was very much Trent Lane.

"So..." Daria whispered to Brian, "How long do we have to wait?"

"About half an hour," Brian answered sweetly, "It'll give us time to prepare."

Daria answered with a much larger smile and nothing else.

* * *

When Quinn awoke, everything had been groggy, she remembered having gone to the bathroom at a gas station after bailing on her crappy date with that loser, what was his name?

It quickly didn't matter when she figured out that she was tied up like a cow back in Texas in a dirty, smelly house.

Then she saw who her captors were.

She started screaming even before they began to play.

* * *

The world for Quinn was made of pure pain now, it was all she could register.

She had lost track of time, space, reality, even reason was starting to slip away into blackness.

Her body was covered in countless cuts, she had experienced all sorts of blunt and sharp objects that night, the only time Daria had stopped was to force her to watch Brian murder a guy that was next to her, cursing in his gag even at the end, his eyes full of impotent hate at Brian, who hadn't stopped smiling.

She had wondered who he was.

Then the pain returned when Daria pulled out that strange looking rod that, as it turned out, could be used to send electricity through the human body at different settings.

Daria used them all randomly, and loved it when Quinn begged for her to stop whenever she threatened her face.

But that was Daria's favorite place to attack, leaving Quinn's beauty a mere thing of the past, now no one would want her.

Time was gone for Quinn, there was only pain.

* * *

Brian smile never left his face as he watched Daria experiment and play with countless instruments of torture he had collected over the years, by the end of the third hour Quinn was a mewling chunk of meat on the blood-soaked floor.

"She looks so beautiful now." Brian thought of the ruin that she had become, his manhood was fully swollen in his shorts at the sight.

Broken things were the only truly beautiful things in the world.

Then Daria's visage grew even less human than it already was, she reached out and grabbed a long, sharp blade, and Brian knew what she was going to do.

"Goodbye Quinn." Daria said normally, as if her sister was going out shopping and would be back in an hour.

The blade rose and was buried deeply into her younger sister's throat, a few gurgling sounds emerged from her destroyed trachea and then...

It was over.

Daria yanked the knife out, careful to avoid the small burst of blood, and put the knife back on the small tarp with the other devices of suffering.

Then she looked at Brian, her face as twisted and dark as his own, her eyes gleamed with a level of desire that he had never seen in them before, and his eyes matched hers.

They lunged at each other and began to make animalistic sounds as they kissed for the first time, they moved away from the bodies to an empty corner of the room, the heat in their bodies growing and growing as they both found their hands moving with wills of their own.

Removing clothing, touching exposed flesh, exploring places never explored before, and then...

They joined as one with the pungent scent of death pervading their senses as the ultimate aphrodisiac.

* * *

Outside, Daria and Brian were strolling casually, looking a bit disheveled, but with his arm around her waist, no one would think much of it.

Brian had parked at a distance away from the old Casa Lane, having borrowed one of his father's old cars since his own was too easily recognized and remembered.

Especially around here.

Brian glanced at Daria, his smile big on his face, but happy instead of twisted, and thought, "The fire I set is at a slow burn, it'll take a while before it becomes big, but the Lane's living room will be toast, along with the evidence."

Daria was carrying the devices that they had used in a Cashman's shopping bag, they were going to take everything to a quiet place and wash it all in a solution, and burn the bloodstained smocks they had worn in lieu of their regular clothes, which they had changed back into.

"If they test the bodies all they'll find in their systems is heroin for Trent," Brian thought as they reached his car, "And tranquilizers and date rape drugs in Quinn."

They put the bag in the trunk before getting into the borrowed vehicle.

"Poor, innocent Quinn," Brian thought to himself as he drove them away, "Captured by 'Psycho Jane's' brother, drugged, used and murdered, but Trent died when he got high and tried to cook up more of his drug of choice and set the place ablaze."

Brian's smile grew as he looked at Daria, as content as content could be.

"I wonder if she'll have a baby from this." Brain pondered as they wove through Lawndale proper.

He kind of hoped so, since it would ensure that he would always be a part of Daria.

"And her a part of me." Brian thought with a strange sense of peace.

They were now bound together forever, by sex, blood, death, and murder.

In his mind that made them married, married in a way that few people would ever experience.

Daria glanced at him with a look of softness and warmth that he knew was reserved for himself alone.

She asked him plainly, "Now what?"

Brian Taylor just replied with a grin, "Anything and everything, the world is our oyster now."

As they began to reach the outskirts of town he added, "This is just the beginning Daria..."

"Yes," she replied with a strange grin, "It is."

By the time he found a secluded area several miles away from Lawndale, their plans were delayed by a new hunger that rested side by side by their mutual need to kill.

And so under the stars and on top of the hood of his father's black Lexus, Brian Taylor got his wish with those stars seeming to explode in his eyes.

It was a night that neither of them would ever forget.

**THE END**


End file.
